Tea For One...

Last night I heard an interview on RTE Radio with English poet Carol Ann Duffy. Poetry just keeps getting in my way these days - sidetracking me from that thesis statement I seem only to be able to compose in my head at 3 a.m. The words never make it to my iMac. So here it is - one of Duffy's deceptively simple poems that reminds me it is often the ordinary acts of love I miss the most...

TEA

I like pouring your tea, lifting
the heavy pot, and tipping it up,
so the fragrant liquid streams in your china cup.

Or when you’re away, or at work,
I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip,
as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips.

I like the questions – sugar? – milk? –
and the answers I don’t know by heart, yet,
for I see your soul in your eyes, and I forget.

Jasmine, Gunpowder, Assam, Earl Grey, Ceylon,
I love tea’s names. Which tea would you like? I say
but it’s any tea for you, please, any time of day,

as the women harvest the slopes
for the sweetest leaves, on Mount Wu-Yi,
and I am your lover, smitten, straining your tea.

by Carol Ann Duffy in Rapture - Macmillan UK (September 1, 2006)